Stranger Things in Marketing: The things we still do Upside Down

In Stranger Things, the Upside Down is a twisted mirror of the real world. The houses are still there, the streets are still there, but it’s not real. The world of marketing has created its own version of this – a world that looks exactly like strategic marketing but operates on inverted principles.

We’re still running campaigns, still optimising creative, still measuring results. The language is familiar, the dashboards look professional, the processes feel legitimate. But somewhere along the way, we inverted what actually matters. We’re optimising for metrics that don’t measure value. We’re attributing success to the wrong sources. We’re scaling creative production whilst shrinking strategic thinking. And because we’re still hitting targets – we’ve lost sight of what really matters.

When AI makes everything (but we learn nothing)

We can now make anything, instantly. Need a hundred variations of an ad? Done by lunch. Want to test different hooks, different visuals, different CTAs across every possible combination? The tools will handle it quickly.

But here’s the thing: capacity isn’t strategy. The ability to produce more doesn’t solve for creative thinking – it actually makes it more important. When you have the strategic foundation right, AI lets you explore and execute brilliantly. But when the strategy is unclear, you’re not just making one misguided ad anymore. You’re making a hundred variations of the same strategic misstep, all perfectly produced, all scaled efficiently, all missing the mark in exactly the same way.

So it looks right, but it’s upside down, as somewhere along the way, we started treating measurement signals as destinations rather than waypoints.

The metrics that actually matter are harder to track and harder to optimise against in real time. But they’re the ones that separate marketing that drives genuine growth from marketing that just drives activity. We need dashboards that show both – the efficiency metrics that prove we’re reaching people cost-effectively, and the value metrics that prove we’re reaching the right people with the right message.

The shift is already happening – Teams are moving beyond vanity metrics to understand genuine user activation. They’re connecting creative strategy to onboarding experience. They’re asking not just “did they install?” but “did they experience the core value?” and “did they come back because they wanted to, not because we nudged them?”

Giving credit where credit isn’t due

When we do see success, we need to be honest about where it actually came from. Our attribution models have their own Upside Down problem – they credit the last touch when the real work often happened much earlier. We attribute success to the ‘algorithm’ while the strategic insight that set the parameters gets forgotten. The final click gets the glory while the creative strategy that made someone care in the first place becomes invisible in the reporting.

Misattribution shapes what we do next – When we credit last-touch instead of the full journey, we optimise the bottom of the funnel whilst the top goes neglected. We’re building our future decisions on a foundation of backwards attribution.

The smartest teams are starting to look beyond their attribution models to understand the fuller story. They’re asking what strategic choices set everything else in motion. They’re recognising that the work that happens before the campaign even launches – the audience insight, the positioning, the creative strategy – often matters more than the optimisation that follows. They’re crediting the thinking, not just the execution.

The innovation paradox

Here’s where it gets really strange: we’ve never had more innovation in marketing technology, yet we’re innovating less where it actually matters. Every week brings new AI tools, new automation platforms, new ways to optimise and scale.

But – the more we automate, the more human strategic thinking we actually need. Technology hasn’t made strategy less important. It’s made it more critical. The tools will execute whatever you tell them to with perfect efficiency, whether your strategy is brilliant or seriously flawed.

That’s perhaps the strangest irony of all – calling ourselves innovative whilst replicating the same thinking that’s always driven performance marketing, just faster and at greater scale.

Finding the Gate

For marketers – that gate is already open, it just needs finding.

Ask better questions, build strategies and then design creative at scale, measure what drives growth, what actually matters, not what’s easy to measure. Connect your creative strategy to your product experience. Recognise that the hardest work – the audience insight, the positioning and voice, the strategic foundation – is also the most valuable work. Challenge the metrics everyone else accepts. Question where success actually originates.

If you’re lucky enough to work with an agency – ask them for more than execution. The best agencies aren’t just there to produce creative faster or manage campaigns more efficiently – you’ve got tools for that now. They’re there because they’ve seen the patterns across dozens of clients and hundreds of campaigns. They know what strategic foundations lead to scale that works versus scale that burns budget. They’ve watched AI amplify brilliant strategies and expose weak ones. Ask them to challenge your assumptions, not just fulfill your brief. Ask them what they’ve learned from your category and similar ones. Ask them to bring strategic perspective, not just capability.

These aren’t revolutionary ideas – they’re fundamental principles that got turned upside down somewhere along the way. Getting back to them doesn’t require new technology or complicated frameworks. It just requires recognising that the hardest work is also the most valuable work.

And here’s the thing: when you shift from acquisition to activation – when you focus on delivering value early rather than just driving installs – your retention work shrinks. Users who experience value from the start don’t need to be constantly re-engaged. They stay because they want to, not because you’ve built elaborate retention mechanics to keep them there. 

Get the foundation right, and everything else gets easier.

And keep the door open three inches, you never know what great ideas are out there…